The revivalist tradition is rooted in pietist hymnody. It is characterized by an emphasis on the relationship of Christ (the bridegroom) to the church and to the individual believer (the bride). It is commonly held that Isaac Watts combined most successfully the expression of worship with that of human devotional experience. The Wesleys developed what we know today as “invitation” songs. When transported to America, this tradition gave rise to the modern revival movement.
The Pietist Movement in Germany
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an important movement flowered in the German Lutheran church known as pietism. Its first leader was Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), who called the church from its obsession with dry scholasticism and cold formalism to an emphasis on personal study of the Scriptures and experiential “religion of the heart.”
Pietists rejected all art music in worship because of the “operatic tendencies” of the time. Johann Sebastian Bach was in constant conflict with the pietists, though his cantata texts show the influence of their theology. The movement inspired a flood of subjective hymnody, much of which was set to tunes in dance-like triple meter, in sharp contrast to the older, rugged chorale style. Some of the best-known hymnists were Johann Freylinghausen (1670–1739), Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), Benjamin Schmolck (1672–1737), and Erdmann Neumeister (1671–1756). It is interesting to note that Neumeister wrote cantata texts used by J. S. Bach and also the original version of the gospel hymn “Sinners Jesus Will Receive” (Christ Receiveth Sinful Men).
One of the favorite images of pietest hymnody—the relationship of Christ (the bridegroom) to the church and to the individual believer (the bride)—appears in even earlier hymns, such as “Jesu, meine Freude” by Johann Franck (1618v1677). The following is a rather literal translation of the first stanza and part of the last.
Jesus, my joy
My heart’s longing,
Jesus, my beauty.
Oh, how long, how long
Is the heart’s concern
And longing after you.
Lamb of God, my bridegroom,
May nothing on earth become dear
To me except you.
Get out, spirit of sadness!
For my Lord of gladness—
Jesus, enters in.
To those who love God,
Even their sorrows
Are purest sweetness (“sugar”).
Franck had modeled his hymn on the love song of H. Alberti, “Flora, meine Freude” (Flora, my joy). English translations have ignored much of the original anthropomorphic imagery, and current German versions have changed the word Zucker (sugar) to Freude (joy).
Dissenters in England
We have already noted that it was a Dissenter—Benjamin Keach, a Baptist—who first introduced a hymn of “human composure” into the psalm-singing culture of seventeenth-century England. Isaac Watts (1674–1748), a Congregational minister, had the most profound influence on his country’s transition to hymn singing and thus became known as the “father of English hymnody.” It is significant that hymn singing flourished in the “renewal-born” free churches (Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian) for a hundred years while it was still being rejected in the established Church of England. Watts has been said to combine most successfully the expression of worship with that of human devotional experience, and it is best illustrated in his well-known hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” of which the first and last stanzas are quoted here.
When I survey the wondrous cross,
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.
The Wesleyan Revival
Evangelistic hymns in the modern sense were one of the glorious by-products of Britain’s Great Awakening in the eighteenth century. It was the preaching of John (1703–1791) and Charles Wesley (1707–1788), and the underlying tenets of the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560–1609) that led to the creation of the first “invitation” songs. Hard-line “hypercalvinism” based on covenant theology and the doctrine of predestination had rarely generated widespread, enthusiastic evangelism. In contrast, the Wesleys’ Arminian theology emphasized that an individual may say either yes or no to a seeking God. To press the claims of Christ while still admitting human free will, Charles Wesley wrote:
Come, sinners, to the Gospel feast:
Let every soul be Jesus’ guest;
Ye need not one be left behind
For God hath bidden all men sing.
This is the time; no more delay!
This is the Lord’s accepted day;
Come thou, this moment, at his call,
And live for him who died for all. (Methodist Hymnal [1964], no. 102)
The Wesleys must be credited with rescuing hymn singing from the bondage of the two-line meters—common long and short. Their sources were the newer psalm tunes, opera melodies, and folk songs of German origin. An example of this type of tune is “Mendenbras” (which was actually first used with a hymn text by Lowell Mason in 1839), which we commonly sing with the text “O day of rest and gladness,” although it may still be heard with its historic popular words in the beer gardens of Germany. The Wesleys’ texts were fundamental for early Methodist theology. They also covered almost every conceivable aspect of Christian devotional experience and may be said to be the progenitors of the modern gospel song.
In any period of spiritual renewal, old symbols frequently lose their meaning and new ones must be sought. Obviously, they will be found outside the church, and because they must be “common” or “popular,” they will come from folk songs and even from commercial entertainment music. In the evangelistic thrust of renewal, these fresh melodies become an effective vehicle for a witness to the uncommitted. The newly adopted modern language eventually gains a new sacralization and becomes the norm for divine worship. It remains so until another spiritual revival displaces it.
In a theological rationale, one might say that this process demonstrates the church’s willingness to be forever incarnational, to identify with “the world” and to transform it for Christ. It is certainly not a new concept in church music.
The American Scene
The early colonies took their worship and evangelism cues from Mother England. America’s first worship music consisted of metrical psalms, and these were still the norm during the thundering revival preaching of Jonathan Edwards, best remembered by the title of one of his famous sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” When the Great Awakening came to America in the mid-eighteenth century—largely through the preaching sorties of the Wesley’s associate George Whitefield—singing broke the bonds of strict psalmody and the hymns of Isaac Watts came to these shores. In the late 1700s, rural Baptists in New England were singing “old country”; the tunes were perpetuated through such books as Kentucky Harmony (1825) and The Sacred Harp (1844), and have come to be known as “white spirituals” or “Appalachian folk hymns.”
The Camp Meetings. In 1800 the camp meeting movement began with an outbreak of revival in an outdoor encampment in Caine Ridge, Logan County, Kentucky. The music which characterized the camp meetings was very simple with many repetitions, evidently very emotional, and frequently improvised. These are typical texts which are little more than refrains:
Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, Come to Jesus just now,
Just now come to Jesus, Come to Jesus just now.
He will save you, he will save you, He will save you just now,
Just now he will save you, He will save you just now. (The Revivalist [1872], 142)
O get your hearts in order, order, order,
O get your hearts in order for the end of time.
For Gabriel’s going to blow, by and by, by and by,
For Gabriel’s going to blow, by and by. (The Evangelical Harp [1845], 40)
Much has been said about the relationship between black spirituals and camp meeting music, with the general impression that the latter may have copied the former. However, at that time in history, particularly in the revival context, blacks and whites worshiped together. It is possible that both cultures contributed to the spontaneous singing in the “brush arbor” meetings, and that blacks continued the tradition after the interest of the whites had diminished and they had moved on to new forms of more traditional, “composed” music. The similarity between camp meeting songs and black spirituals is shown by Ellen Jane (Lorenz) Porter in her lecture “The Persistence of the Primitive in American Hymnology.” She points out that the song “Where Are the Hebrew Children?” is found in both the North and the South.
Many of the camp meeting songs also used popular melodies. According to Mrs. Porter, “Where Are the Hebrew Children?” has many parodies, including the Ozark song, “Where, O Where Is Pretty Little Susie?” and the college song “Where, O Where Are the Verdant Freshmen?”
It is evident that refrains were the most important element in camp meeting music, and some songs were little more. In other instances, favorite refrains were attached to many different hymns. In the Companion to Baptist Hymnal (p. 48), William J. Reynolds cites a quotation of P. P. Bliss in which “I will arise and go to Jesus” is identified as “one of the old-fashioned camp meeting spirituals” which could be sung as a response to Joseph Hart’s “Come ye sinners, poor and needy” or after each stanza of an anonymous paraphrase of the prodigal son story, “Far, far away from my loving Father.” Note also that the refrain “Blessed be the name of the Lord” appears with Charles Wesley’s “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (Baptist Hymnal [1975], no. 50) and with William H. Clark’s “All praise to Him who reigns above” (Hymns for the Living Church [1974], no. 81). In the same tradition, Ralph E. Hudson added the lilting testimony refrain “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light” to the sober, devotional “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?” of Isaac Watts. In another example, the final stanza commonly sung to John Newton’s “Amazing Grace,” by an unknown author, was also appended both to Isaac Watts’s “When I Can Read My Title Clear” and to the sixteenth-century anonymous hymn “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” despite its grammatical weaknesses.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun;
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun. (sic)
The Finney Revival. The Second Great Awakening was an urban phenomenon in Eastern seaboard states in the early nineteenth century. Charles Granville Finney, a Presbyterian with a pronounced Arminian theological bent, was the central preacher. He frequently worked with the music educator-composer Thomas Hastings. Their association marks the first recorded instance of a songbook published specifically for a revival campaign. The following hymn was reputed to have been in one of Hastings’s compilations and to have been used by Finney at the conclusion of the sermon as part of a protracted, emotional “altar call.”
Hearts of stone, relent, relent,
Break, by Jesus’ cross subdued;
See his body, mangled—rent,
Covered with a gore of blood.
Sinful soul, what hast thou done!
Murdered God’s eternal Son.
Yes, our sins have done the deed,
Drove the nails that fixed him there,
Crowned with thorns his sacred head,
Pierced him with a soldier’s spear;
Made his soul a sacrifice,
For a sinful world he dies.
Will you let him die in vain,
Still to death pursue your Lord;
Open tear his wounds again,
Trample on his precious blood?
No! with all my sins I’ll part,
Savior, take my broken heart.
Sunday School Hymns and the Gospel Song
Beginning in the 1840s, the Sunday school hymns of William B. Bradbury and others had the same musical form as camp meeting songs—catchy melody, simple harmony and rhythm, and an inevitable refrain. Eventually, these children’s hymns were picked up by adults, and the “gospel hymn” or “gospel song” was born, so named by Philip Phillips, “the Singing Pilgrim.” It was the evangelistic missions of Moody and Sankey in Great Britain and America that launched the gospel song on its century-long career that is still going strong. The gospel song also received a great impetus by its association with the “sing schools” conducted by itinerant music teachers in the middle of the nineteenth century. The most successful of the teachers—J. G. Towner, P. P. Bliss, and George F. Root, and many others—wrote and published both sacred and secular music, and in much the same style as Stephen Foster, composer of “My Old Kentucky Home” as well as many sacred selections. The hallowed Fanny Crosby, author of perhaps 9,000 gospel song texts, had achieved earlier success writing popular secular songs in collaboration with George F. Root, an associate of Lowell Mason in public school music, who taught at New York’s Union Theological Seminary and also supplied music for the original Christy Minstrel Singers.
It should not be thought that these were unlettered, uncultured individuals who lacked recognition in their own society. Phoebe Palmer Knapp, composer of the music for “Blessed Assurance,” was married to the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and William Howard Doane, the most frequent collaborator of Fanny J. Crosby, was an extremely wealthy industrialist and civic leader. William Bradbury, George F. Root, and Charles Converse (What a Friend We Have in Jesus) all studied in Europe, and were acquainted with Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Louis Spohr. Fanny Crosby was well known by five American presidents and many other government leaders. The music these individuals wrote was highly successful in nineteenth-century America, and often made a great deal of money for them and their publishers.
We must also note that “experience hymns” continued to appear in evangelical settings the world around. For one thing, American hymns in this style were translated into every language in which Protestant worship was conducted, both in Europe and in mission lands. In addition, other countries produced their own versions. In Sweden, for example, a renewal movement developed in the Lutheran church during the 1840s under the lay preacher Carl Rosenius (1816–1868). Lina Sandell (1832–1903) supported the movement with her hymns to such an extent that she became known as the “Swedish Fanny Crosby.” Music for many of her songs was written by Oscar Ahnfelt, who was called the “Swedish Troubadour” because of his itinerant ministry of singing and playing his own accompaniments on a guitar. The Sandell/Ahnfelt songs were published in a series of books with the help of the famous coloratura soprano, Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale.” This is the first stanza of one of Lina Sandell’s best-known hymns, many of which were brought to America by Swedish immigrants and are now sung by many evangelicals.
Day by day and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure
Gives unto each day what He deems best—
Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest. (Lina Sandell, 1865, Trans. by A. L. Skoog)
There have been many attempts to define a “gospel song” in order to differentiate it from more traditional hymn forms. Frequently it has been argued that hymns are “objective” (about God, the “object” of our thought) and gospel songs are “subjective” (about the thinking “subject” and his or her experience of God). However, many historic hymns are simultaneously both “objective” and “subjective” (e.g., Watts’s “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) while some acknowledged gospel songs are quite thoroughly objective (e.g., “Praise Him, Praise Him, Jesus Our Blessed Redeemer,” by Fanny J. Crosby). Even metrical psalms have been set to gospel song music (e.g., E. O. Sellers’s adaptation of Psalm 119, “Thy Word Is a Lamp to My Feet”).
The title gives some cue as to the norm. “Gospel” suggests that it is usually concerned with a simple gospel: the message of sin, grace, and redemption, and a person’s experience of them; “song” indicates a nontraditional origin—that is, it is not a hymn. Basically, the poetry was simpler than that of a hymn—less theological and less biblical, less challenging to the imagination, sometimes even inane. The musical structure was characterized by a refrain—a novelty in hymns, a simple lyric melody, inconsequential harmony, and a sprightly rhythm.
The Moody-Sankey Campaigns
Early in his ministry in the slums of Chicago, the untutored lay preacher Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) sensed the power of the new songs to motivate men and women to spiritual action. When he embarked on a wider ministry, he chose Ira D. Sankey (1840–1908), a civil servant and amateur musician, to accompany him. Sankey led the congregational hymns and sang his solos while seated at a little reed organ. He was also a prominent composer and publisher of gospel songs. The story of Sankey’s experience as he accompanied Mr. Moody to Scotland in 1873 is told in his own book, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs (New York: Harper, 1907). On one particular occasion, he was concerned because the illustrious hymn writer Horatius Bonar was in the audience:
Of all men in Scotland he was the one concerning whose decision I was most solicitous. He was, indeed, my ideal hymn writer, the prince among hymnists of his day and generation. And yet he would not sing one of his beautiful hymns in his own congregation … because he ministered to a church that believed in the use of the Psalms only.
With fear and trembling, I announced as a solo the song, “Free from the law, oh, happy condition.” Feeling that the singing might prove only entertainment and not a spiritual blessing, I requested the whole congregation to join me in a word of prayer, asking God to bless the truth about to be sung. In the prayer my anxiety was relieved. Believing and rejoicing in the glorious truth contained in the song, I sang it through to the end.
At the close of Mr. Moody’s address, Dr. Bonar turned toward me with a smile on his venerable face, and reaching out his hand he said: “Well, Mr. Sankey, you sang the gospel tonight.” And thus the way was opened for the mission of sacred song in Scotland. (Ibid., pp. 61–62)
In the Moody-Sankey meetings, England and America witnessed the advent of “Jesus” preaching and singing. Along with the biblically-strong “Free from the law,” which was a good choice for the theologically minded Scots, there were many simple expressions of the love of God through Christ:
I am so glad that our Father in heaven
Tells of His love in the book He has given;
Wonderful things in the Bible I see:
This is the dearest, that Jesus loves me. (P. P. Bliss)
It is characteristic of the best witness songs that they are always couched in contemporary language. In Moody’s day the idea of “being lost” or “saved” was often expressed in nautical terms:
Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore,
Heed not the rolling waves, but bend to the oar;
Safe in the lifeboat, sailor, cling to self no more;
Leave that poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the shore. (Author unknown)
I’ve anchored my soul in the haven of rest,
I’ll sail the wide seas no more;
The tempest may sweep o’er the wild, stormy deep,
In Jesus I’m safe evermore. (H. L. Gilmour)
The idea of conflict and challenge in spiritual living probably took images from the Civil War.
Ho, my comrades! See the signal waving in the sky!
Reinforcements now appearing! Victory is nigh!
Hold the fort! for I am coming;
Jesus signals still.
Wave the answer back to heaven;
“By thy grace, we will!” (P. P. Bliss)
Since the days of Sankey, the solo singer has been a distinctive part of musical mass evangelism in America. Philip Phillips (1834–1895) was perhaps the first in a long line of illustrious soloist-song leader-publishers, which includes Sankey’s contemporaries Robert Lowry (1826–1899), P. P. Bliss (1838–1876), James McGranahan (1840–1907), P. P. Bilhorn (1865–1936), and Homer Rodeheaver (1880–1955). The strong contribution of the gospel singer is the “person to person”—often layperson to person—witness of Christian experience. In this ministry, the gospel message acquired an intensity of emotional communication that is acknowledged by both its proponents and its detractors. This was true even in the earliest days when the songs were not characteristically soloistic but were sung by soloists and congregations alike. It is even more so now that styles of writing and performing solo music are fully developed. The gospel singer’s appeal and popularity may be surpassed only by the singer of secular popular music. It was this same personal, emotional communication of common human experience that gave Sankey equal billing with Moody.
“Charlie” Alexander and Gospel Choirs
In the early twentieth century, it was Charles Alexander (1867–1920), song leader for evangelists R. A. Torrey and J. Wilbur Chapman, who brought the “gospel choir” to its apex. Not an outstanding soloist himself, Alexander specialized in the leading of massed choirs and congregations around the world for more than twenty-five years. Once again, the significance of a ministry in music gave the song leader equal billing with the evangelist. Earlier it had been Moody and Sankey. Now it was Torrey and Alexander as well as Chapman and Alexander. One is tempted to discount the laudatory reports of Alexander’s conducting successes in newspapers of that day.
Mr. Alexander is a conductor of the first order, and he exercises a curious spell over an audience. He drills a thousand people with the precision and authority of a drill-sergeant. He scolds, exhorts, rebukes, and jests. And the amusing feature is that the great audience enjoys being scolded and drilled.… They seem at first an audience for whom music has ceased to have any ministry. But as the singing goes on, the tired faces relax, the eyes brighten, the lips begin to move.… Music, as the servant and vehicle of religion, has fulfilled its true and highest office. It has set a thousand human souls vibrating in gladness. No one need doubt that the gospel can be sung as effectively as it can be spoken. (A statement by W. H. Fitchett, editor of The Southern Cross, describing a midday meeting in Melbourne, Australia’s Town Hall, quoted in Helen C. Alexander and J. Kennedy Maclean, Charles M. Alexander: A Romance of Song and Soul-Winning [New York: Marshall Bros., 1921], 51-52)
I have watched the methods and the triumphs of the most famous baton-wielders of the time—Colonne, Nikisch, Mottl, Weingartner, and Henry J. Wood. Never have I been so much impressed as I was by this bright-faced, energetic young evangelist. As the leader of a choir he has an amazing and almost magical influence, not only over the trained choir; he simply makes everybody sing, and sing as he wants them to. “Watch my hand!” he calls, and the men’s unaccompanied voices rise and fall in crooning cadences with an effect any conductor might be proud of. Watch his hands? Why we are watching every part of him; we cannot take our eyes off him; we are fascinated, hypnotized, bewitched … (Ibid., p. 106. The article is by H. Hamilton Fyle, music critic, in the London Daily Mirror, February 6, 1905, reporting on a meeting in Royal Albert Hall.)
This kind of entertaining genius may help to account for the physical stamina which was demonstrated by audiences of that day. A “Festival of Song”—shared equally by congregation, choir, and soloists—was expected to last for three hours. In a report of the meetings in Royal Albert Hall, London, it was said that the audience came at two o’clock in the afternoon and stayed until six. Torrey preached for about forty-five minutes and the rest of the time was consumed by song, with the audience calling for one favorite after another.
It is apparent that the revival choir was expected to share the prophetic/evangelistic ministry of the evangelist; its materials consisted of the “basic gospel,” and it was seated with the evangelists behind the pulpit, not in a “divided chancel” or in the balcony in the tradition of Old World churches.
“Charlie” Alexander was responsible for one more innovation in revivalist music—the use of the piano. Earlier leaders had used the pipe organ when it was available, or else a harmonium, a reed organ. Alexander found that the percussive piano was more helpful in leading the livelier songs of his day. Robert Harkness was his best-known pianist. Harkness also wrote a number of songs in a more distinctively “soloistic” style (e.g., “Why Should He Love Me So?”) It is said that Harkness was recruited from a “music hall” before he was a committed Christian and that Alexander led him to personal faith in Christ.
The Team of Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver
It is a popular misconception that “gospel music” did not change much from 1850 to 1950. Each generation has contributed its own theological, poetic, and musical flavor. From 1890 to 1910, the scene was dominated by teachers and students of the Moody Bible Institute, where D. B. Towner had become the mentor of gospel music. Songs of that period were intensely biblical and theological. Between 1910 and 1920, Billy Sunday came to the fore as an evangelist, with his song leader-soloist-trombonist, Homer Rodeheaver. Both men had gifts suited to the theater—Sunday was the dynamic, compulsive, athletic spellbinder, and Rodeheaver was the genial, suave, relaxed, joking “master of ceremonies.” They brought evangelistic crusades to a new level, with crowd-pleasing mannerisms of entertainment.
“Rody” was a master at getting people to sing. He used every gimmick at his disposal to break down the traditionally staid approach to religious music. Neither “Rody” nor Sunday would tolerate glumness in the Gospel, and the tabernacle crowds soon learned to expect the unexpected. Delegations that came were asked to sing their favorite song; railroaders, for instance, stood to sing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” College groups could count on a chance to sing their Alma Mater and give a victory cheer. (D. Bruce Lockerbie, Billy Sunday [Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1965], 58)
Seafaring imagery was still around in those days because memories of the “Titanic” tragedy were still vivid.
I was sinking deep in sin, Far from the peaceful shore …
Love lifted me, love lifted me,
When nothing else could help, Love lifted me. (James Rowe)
Other expressions were more serene, if not strongly theological:
What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought,
Since Jesus came into my heart;
I have peace in my soul for which long I had sought,
Since Jesus came into my heart. (C. H. Gabriel)
The early twentieth century had its own “physical” music, as well. I remember singing one in the 1920s that was obviously inspired by stories of the First World War.
Over the top for Jesus, Routing every foe;
Never delaying when we hear the bugle blow,
We’ll fight for the right with all our might
As over the top we go. (Author unknown)
Radio Renewal
During the “roaring twenties” mass revivalism went into a decline. It continued to be practiced in the local church, but there was no commanding evangelist to capture the nation’s attention for a period of almost thirty years. Southern Baptists showed the most interest in continuing the tradition in the local church or community, and their most gifted songwriter, B. B. McKinney, composed words and music of some of the most important gospel hymns of the period. For many, the interest in outreach shifted to radio. The music of “gospel radio” was colored by the demands and the traditions of the new medium. Like television twenty-five years later, radio contributed much to the “spectator complex” in the recreation habits of our culture, and undoubtedly it encouraged spectatorism in church life. Much of the new gospel music had been “special,” never intended for congregational use. Undoubtedly the voicing (the ladies’ trio, for instance), the choral and instrumental arranging techniques, and the more advanced harmonic and rhythmic patterns were all borrowed from the entertainment world.
At the historic, radio-conscious Chicago Gospel Tabernacle, Merrill Dunlop wrote and published Songs of a Christian (Chicago: Van Kampen Press, 1946). He says that he was first inspired by the “different” harmonies and styles of Robert Harkness’s songs. In his own advanced, jazz-related rhythm and harmony, Dunlop foreshadowed the present day. On one occasion he wrote a missions hymn in rhumba rhythm; to him, this was perfectly logical because his special interest in foreign missions was South American. At about the same time and in the same city, Moody Bible Institute began gospel broadcasting in 1926; their radio director, Wendell Loveless, wrote gospel songs and choruses in a pseudo-Broadway style.
Youth for Christ
In the 1940s, evangelism was frequently associated with Youth for Christ, one of the parachurch organizations that have become so common on the evangelical scene. Traditionally YFC rallies met on Saturday evening for a pleasant blend of entertainment, fellowship, and religious challenge. Their norm for congregational singing was the gospel chorus. This return to the camp-meeting emphasis of the 1800s seemed to indicate that they agreed that the refrain was the only significant part of a gospel song, or that it was all the text that an audience could be expected to assimilate. When traditional gospel songs were sung, frequently the stanzas were completely omitted. In addition, many independent choruses were composed and collected in a huge proliferation of “chorus books.”
In the late 1940s a new gospel hymn writer appeared. John W. Peterson (b. 1921), a pilot in World War II, first came to national attention about 1950 when his song “It Took a Miracle” began to be played on jukeboxes. His music was generally designed to be sung by soloists, choirs, and small ensembles, and only recently has begun to appear in hymnals. Peterson later found that he had a talent for composing “cantatas” for churches that had not traditionally used that form; he has now written more than a score of them and reportedly has sold more than a million copies!
In general, his lyrics show his strong biblical roots, particularly his postwar study at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. His music varies from a typical gospel song style to an imitation of Broadway show tunes and was sufficiently creative to capture the attention of a large section of the evangelical public.
The Era of Billy Graham
The world-famous evangelist Billy Graham began his ministry with Youth for Christ, and in 1949, thanks to publicity by Hearst newspapers, he came to the attention of much of the world. The music of the Billy Graham crusades has largely depended on materials developed since 1850, borrowing some items from each period. A doctoral dissertation (George Stansbury, The Music of the Billy Graham Crusades, 1947–1970 [Louisville, Ky.: Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1971], 311-312) points out that, unlike its revivalist predecessors, the Graham ministry has neither produced nor promoted a large body of new musical material. This may be partly due to the fact that, unlike Sankey, Alexander, and Rodeheaver, song leader Cliff Barrows is not a publisher.
However, this unique phenomenon in the history of evangelism more likely reflects the “establishment” image which characterized revivalism in the mid-twentieth century. Dr. Graham evidently purposes to be conservative—fresh and appealing but shunning the sensational and overemotional. Consequently, Barrows has used materials that have been already proven to be widely popular, choosing them from the compositions of Ira Sankey, Fanny Crosby, Charles H. Gabriel, Haldor Lillenas, Merrill Dunlop, John Peterson, and finally, Bill Gaither. The Billy Graham films have made their own contribution to contemporary music through the folk/ballad songs of Ralph Carmichael (e.g., “He’s Everything to Me” and “The New 23rd”), who composed the musical scores for several releases. Pianist Tedd Smith has also written some very significant music. The new musical feature in Graham crusades, however, has been the use of show-business talent like Johnny Cash and Norma Zimmer—as well as the best-known contemporary gospel singers—to attract the unchurched.
In the 1980s, the music of John Peterson came to be considered sophisticated and even elitist. In the typically “gospel song” style, it was Bill and Gloria Gaither from central Indiana who captured the imagination and the approval of much of the evangelical public. The Gaithers write songs that are much less theological and overtly biblical than Peterson’s. They get their inspiration, they say, by listening to the latest pop songs; their songs, then, are “religious” reply. There is just enough contemporary freshness in the title and the principal refrain-phrase to appeal to modern evangelicals, many of whom are drawn to country music. Among the best-known Gaither songs are “He Touched Me,” “Get All Excited,” “The King Is Coming,” “Just Because He Lives,” and “The Old Rugged Cross Made the Difference.”
As in all experience songs, the new gospel music reflects the thought patterns of our day. A modern person’s need of God will not be expressed well in such frontier language as “I’ve wandered far away from God; Now I’m coming home,” or “Would you be free from your burden of sin? There’s power in the blood.” Sin and lostness must be redefined for each succeeding generation. An individual’s estrangement from God may be better described today in one of the favorite solos of Graham’s gospel singer, George Beverly Shea: “Tired of a life without meaning / Always in a crowd, yet alone.”
Other Musical Styles
Of course, the gospel song has not been the only variety of witness music known in recent years. In the 1930s, perhaps recalling the heyday of barbershop quartet singing, the Stamps-Baxter “gospel quartet” emerged to present all-night gospel sings and to publish scores of small songbooks which became popular, particularly in rural churches of the South. Most of these Southern hymns were up-tempo, combining the call-and-response techniques of spirituals with the word-repetition common to the quartet song. In later years, the singing groups have varied in size and in voicing (including women as well as men), have adopted several different musical styles, and communicate both in “sacred concerts” and on television.
Even more startling varieties of gospel music were yet to come. In the wake of the Beatles and Geoffrey Beaumont’s Twentieth Century Folk Mass, “gospel folk” and “gospel rock” appeared in Great Britain in the early 1960s. It was quickly transported to America, where its first appeal was strongest in the liturgical and more liberal ecclesiastical communities. It was heralded as a renewal in communication by churches whose attendance and financial support were falling off, and where young people were conspicuous by their absence.
The first reaction of the traditionally evangelical groups was a little amusing when one remembers their long-time heritage of borrowing secular tunes for sacred purposes. Horrified protests that “this-worldly, entertainment music [was] not worthy of the message of Christ” poured in from many denominations. However, most evangelicals soon recovered their equilibrium, and their young people eagerly joined the crescendo of drums, guitars, and voices. At first, they were not allowed to indulge their new musical tastes in the church sanctuary; the folk musicals had to be performed in the fellowship hall or in an outside auditorium. But in the last ten years, gospel rock and gospel folk music have become common, and many other styles have been added. It is already apparent that we have seen the most complete invasion of religious expression by popular music in history. Music leaders change formats almost monthly to keep up with the latest trends in secular popular music.
Summary and Evaluation
Much criticism has been leveled at modern-day evangelism. What can we say then about the effectiveness of revivalism with its music in the history of America and of the world? Since we believe that the Holy Spirit has been present and creatively active in the world since Pentecost, we must acknowledge that the extra-ecclesiastical, personality-centered ministry of revivalists has contributed to the growth and the renewing of the church, from Francis of Assisi to John Hus to the Wesleys to D. L. Moody to Billy Sunday to Billy Graham and Barry Moore. Whatever their personal weaknesses—of character or theology or method—these individuals have been used by God to accomplish some of his purposes.
It would be difficult to separate the musical expression of revivalism from the preaching; the two seem to belong to each other, though both have tended to be anti-establishment. In sixteenth-century Germany, Luther was both a preacher and hymn writer, and it would be hard to prove that one role was more significant than the other in advancing the cause of the Reformation. In the history of Great Britain in the 1870s and 1880s, the names of Moody and Sankey are forever linked, for the musician seemed as important as the preacher in accomplishing God’s work. It was the same with Chapman and Alexander and later with Sunday and Rodeheaver. Furthermore, each period of renewal has been characterized by a flowering of new hymnody; it is as a result of these stimuli that hymnology textbooks are written.
We need both the transcendent and the immanent in music because that is the God we know—the God who is above all his creation, whom we cannot see except “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12), and yet One who dwells within the believer, closer than hands and feet. It is expressed well in one verse from the Old Testament:
For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isa. 57:15)
This theological paradox is argument enough for a twofold purpose in church music. The church requires music that expresses both the perfections of the “high and holy” God, and also the personal, religious experience of the “broken and humble.”